Here we are in chippewas of rama first nation!
[cheering & applauding]
Rama, on the shores of lake couchiching.
If you want a showcase of chippewa culture...
If you want to see dreamcatchers,
You want to hear drumming...
You want to hear the ojibwe language...
In rama, you hit the jackpot.
[laughing]
Yes, there is a casino also.
[laughing]
And I'll admit, I made the mistake-
When I first moved to toronto, on the radio,
You hear ads for a casino rama,
And I thought, "rama", they just stuck it on
To make it sound better.
-[laughing] -like dollarama.
Or like in hockey, the spinorama.
[laughing]
I did not know that rama was a community.
Now I know, and it's a beautiful community.
I tell you, when I first got here, I...
I went to take a picture that I was hoping would
Encompass the beauty of the area.
So I took one of those sweeping pictures
Where you your turn.
You sort of pan across...
A panorama!
[laughing]
[cheering & applauding]
When you grow up in a small town in newfoundland,
You see that people have a sense of humour
About hard times.
Check, check.
I turned that into a career and hit the road.
[mc] mr. Jonny harris!
Now I'm on a mission to find the funny in the places
You'd least expect,
Canada's struggling small towns.
Towns that are against the ropes,
But hanging in there...
Still laughing in the face of adversity.
This is chippewas of rama first nation.
♪
[cheering & applauding]
The chippewas of rama, the people of the deer.
But that name has taken a bit of a journey.
Earlier it was the chippewa of mnjikaning.
And then that changed to rama for the township.
But chippewa is ojibwe.
Ojibwe are anishinaabe.
Chippewas of rama is the band.
I guess you could have went with "band of rama,"
But that sounds a bit too much like bananarama...
Which is also a band.
[laughing]
♪
To find out who put the casino in casino rama,
You need to know who put the casino in rama.
It was easy for me to find out.
I just listened to a ted... Talk.
Chief ted williams.
[cheering & applauding]
Chief ted told me in the early 1800s,
The chippewas of rama were moved to cold water, ontario.
Cold water was basically an experiment...
Where you put the first nation community
Together and, ah...
Christianize them,
Teach them how to farm.
Meanwhile, we already had everything that we needed.
They wanted the ojibwe to farm on their assigned land
And not move around,
Stay on that assigned land,
Because the ojibwe, for hunting and fishing,
Had been semi-nomadic, which I don't want to
Trivialize by comparing to my own life.
Although in grade three I did have catholic nuns
Tell me to stop moving around.
[laughing]
I wasn't semi-nomadic, but I was squirmy.
[laughing]
But there was a lot of settlers coming in,
And it was good farmland,
And they wanted that farmland.
The chippewas were farming so well,
The government realized that it was good farming land,
And then moved them off of it.
And, land was found here,
Land that was available and affordable.
We bought our own land.
Right here.
And chief ted explained to me that it was cheap and
Available because it was very rocky.
It's not great for farming.
Hard times fell on the people.
Chief ted said that when he was a kid,
You could tell when you were driving through the community.
Most homes had no running water.
We had 70 to 80% unemployment.
Things were dire.
Then in 1993, a decision was made
To build a massive casino...
In a first nations community.
14 communities submitted applications.
You only have one shot at this.
And so, we covered all the bases.
Chief ted was determined.
He said the community needed it.
Rama would take casi-no for an answer.
[laughing]
I get a phone call. He basically says,
"teddy, they're coming. We won."
And then in 1994, it was announced
That rama would get the casino.
♪
And the casino was a massive success right off the bat.
Things just took right off.
So the first year of the opening of the casino,
We had over 3400 employees.
It wasn't long before the casino was making
$550 million a year.
And thanks to the casino,
Rama got a water treatment plant,
A wastewater facility,
A new school, a seniors centre,
A paid fire department with state of the art fire trucks,
Fancy trucks.
I'm not a big gambler, but if I ever won big money
At a casino, first thing I would get myself...
Wastewater treatment facility.
[laughing]
What has it meant for the community?
Well, it's quality housing.
We have jobs. We generate revenue.
He had an emotional moment when he realized
What a success it was.
He said one night he was working at the casino
'til about 12:30.
And when he left, he was driving down the road,
And he started counting the amount of cars
That were driving to the casino.
And if you've ever watched the movie...
"field of dreams", there was just
A straight line of headlights.
He said he counted 240 cars in 240 seconds.
-I actually had to stop. -Yeah.
I had to pull off to the side of the road.
I get emotional thinking about it right now.
Yeah.
I think it was a good thing he was kind of
Down the road, though...
Because if he had done that at the casino,
I think you can get in big trouble for counting cars...
-[laughing] -at a casino.
[laughing & applauding]
♪
When it comes to catching dreams,
In rama, you've got just the thing.
I learned a little about dreaming big
When I visited bob and bela williams.
[cheering & applauding]
Bob is well known in rama as a builder of dreamcatchers.
And dreamcatchers, of course,
Are common to many indigenous cultures,
But are particularly an ojibwe thing.
You have to have faith in it.
It's just not a thing you hang on the wall.
Bob said evil spirits get sucked into it, right,
And they get trapped.
If evil comes near it... [whooshing]
Trapped inside the dreamcatcher.
And I can't help but picture-
Remember the bad guys in one of the superman movies,
In the pane of glass, and they get stuck in there.
-[laughing] -they can't get out.
The tradition was lost for a while.
Our people lost that teaching a long time ago.
So nowadays everybody goes to the steel hoop.
A dreamcatcher shouldn't have steel in it.
Bob is known for making big dreamcatchers,
And he began to dream about making the
Biggest one ever in the world.
So, he looked up to see if there was
A record, and there is.
It's recognized by the
Guinness book of world records.
So, where is the biggest dreamcatcher in the world?
-That was in lithuania. -Lithuania?
Lithuanians decided to build a huge dreamcatcher,
But as bob said, he doesn't even
Really consider it a dreamcatcher.
A real dreamcatcher has to look like that.
Feathers on it.
Theirs looks like that.
It's just a circle.
That is just a circle until I put feathers on it.
It's not a dream catcher.
And who determined that that should get the record?
Like the guinness home offices are in london.
So you got a bunch of people from England
Going to lithuania.
They probably arrived in lithuania, and were like,
"oh, bloody me, that's a big circle."
[laughing]
"bugger me, lithuania,
I think you've done it, old chap."
[laughing]
But the long and the short of it is bob decided that
The record should be here in rama.
When we first started off, I had to go
Across the road and found 85 trees.
It took 85 trees.
It took 7000 feet of rope.
I just thought, well, this is gonna take
A lot of people to do.
I invited the people out, come on out.
Participate in this. This is big.
And when bela put the word out to the community,
Over 100 volunteers came.
People worked in the heat,
And getting eaten alive by bugs,
And helped make this massive dreamcatcher.
Bela said she put in so many hours herself.
She did a lot of sewing.
Well, if you're not careful at what you're doing,
You sew yourself to it.
[laughing]
She said more than once she sewed herself into the thing.
[laughing]
The community came in and helped lift it up.
It was a beautiful day. We had the school.
We had every department in rama,
The firetruck, the policemen.
Everybody was there.
♪
It's finished, it's hung up in the powwow grounds.
This massive,
43-foot diameter dreamcatcher.
Which, by the way, is over 10 feet larger across
Than the one in lithuania.
[cheering & applauding]
This thing is so big,
Bob figures it weighs about 2,000 pounds.
And that's the curb weight.
That's before you got any evil spirits in there.
[laughing]
It's helped. It's doing its job.
It's bringing everybody together.
But we made one.
In order to sort of show me the basics of it,
Bob had a table,
And we were bending these willow twigs around the nails,
And then we started the webbing with string.
That's all right, that's all right.
If you get the rope around that hoop...
And it all connects to a smaller hoop in the middle,
And the idea is, if you've got it all done right...
There you go! Woo!
When you take it off that frame, it will keep its form.
Jonny, this is your first dreamcatcher.
-Absolutely my first. -You did wonderful.
It looked pretty good.
It doesn't have the feathers yet, so...
Technically, it's just a hoop.
But bob said it's worth finishing.
It will have feathers in it here.
And it's pretty big.
I had a new respect for the one that's
Down in the powwow grounds,
Because that one is easily over 100 times the size
Of the one that we made, but still, this one...
Like it wouldn't fit on your rear view mirror.
[laughing]
So where does it stand now as far as the
Guinness book of world records?
When are they gonna come take a look?
It doesn't matter to us now.
-We know we have the record. -Yeah.
-We have record. -It's there, it's there.
If anybody shows up from England,
Make sure they're from guinness and not from the
British museum of world culture.
[laughing]
If anybody shows up from that museum,
And they want to hang on to it for a little bit...
Just, they like to collect things.
[laughing]
[cheering & applauding]
While I was here in rama, I learned about
A traditional method of catching fish...
With chief lady bird and tim shilling.
[cheering & applauding]
Chief lady bird, she's not a chief chief.
But she is, like myself, an incredible artist.
[laughing]
And she spent 9 years in toronto.
Painted a lot of walls,
We've done murals in schools with students,
And used that as a teaching tool about our culture and...
Treaties, language, etc.
We had a lot of mural jobs, so I needed to get
The sketches done quicker.
So I got an ipad and taught myself digital illustration.
She designed a logo for xbox.
She did an emoji for twitter a couple of years ago,
And this was to represent all indigenous groups across
Turtle island, but I think it'd be cool if she designed
One specifically for chippewas of rama,
And then she could say she got her band on twitter.
[laughing & applauding]
She said when she moved back,
That's when she met her partner, tim.
And then we kind of all became a family, like,
Right at once, you know, the kids, and...
-Yeah? -It just worked out.
She was telling me about her family spearfishing.
It's like a very communal...
Connecting time for us.
You got it. He's huge!
I did it!
And daddy helped. Good job, daddy.
And then eating something that we catch as a family and
Clean as a family has always been like,
The greatest feeling.
And they're both big on sustainability.
And one way you ensure that
There's fish to catch in the future,
When they catch a fish, they will milk it.
We love doing that because we want to see, like,
The continuance of their life cycle.
Tim explained this to me.
He had a couple of bass that he brought to show me.
When we're sexing the fish, we'd just be looking
Right here at its private parts.
Pushing down, and then we'd see
Either eggs or milk come down.
You're squeezing out the...
The reproductive... Milk.
[laughing]
You're squeezing out the eggs and sperm
Into a bucket, and you stir that with a stick.
Is it getting warm in here, or...?
[laughing]
Nothing too crazy.
We don't want to wreck the eggs.
We put them back in a nice spot where it's shallow,
And we know that they're gonna make it.
You know, it's about ensuring future generations.
It's the same reason that I got some of my-
I froze some of my sperm.
[laughing]
Which is easier than you think, actually.
You just sharpie the date on a margarine container.
Put it in the freezer.
[laughing]
Anyway, we went out in the boat.
Chief lady bird, and tim,
And their son, colton, and myself.
Sometimes we spend a lot of hours out here.
Sometimes we're only here for ten minutes.
Sometimes colton gets cold, and he wants to go home.
[laughing]
Spear fishing is- it's not easy.
You go out at night.
And, they told me that you turn on a flashlight,
And then when you find a fish,
You turn the flashlight off.
Turn that on. Turn it off as needed.
I didn't know why you had to turn the flashlight off,
But I'll take a stab in the dark.
[laughing]
He said sometimes the fish can get spooked by the light,
So you want to use it as little as possible.
And then, the challenge is you got to try to spear
Where you think the fish is gonna be.
Right there, right there, right there.
-Did you get one? -Hm... No.
[laughing]
Oh, I caught a big stick.
But, we didn't end up getting a fish.
Although now, at the end of the episode, we can say,
"no fish were harmed in the making of this episode."
[laughing]
You know what? Even though we didn't catch anything,
It was still so nice to be out here.
Because it was such a beautiful night,
And we were all feeling pretty good about it.
And then chief lady bird,
She taught me an anishinaabemowin word.
Have you ever heard the word, mino-bimaadiziwin?
-Mino-bimaadiziwin. -Yep.
And this means "to be living a good life".
Being with family, being on the land.
Continuing our teachings, passing them on.
Being together.
Being in good relation with everything.
I think we got that down pat.
[laughing]
But I did catch one of chief lady bird's fish
In one of her murals.
At the social services building,
She has a mural of her and her family spearfishing.
And I think tim is in the mural.
There's a man standing there with a spear,
And he's got a lot of hair...
But I don't know if he's got quite enough hair to be tim.
[laughing]
[cheering & applauding]
♪ [indigenous singing & drumming] ♪
♪
I was lucky that my visit here coincided
With first nations day,
And it always begins with a sunrise ceremony.
And then there's the parade, a big parade.
Big for a small community parade.
[laughing]
[cheering]
And it's nice. All the kids come out.
I saw chief ted was leading off.
I saw the fire trucks,
But nothing compared to bela's float.
[cheering & applauding]
Woo-oo!
When bela showed up,
All the kids were cheering her name.
Bela! Bela!
[cheering] woo-ooh!
Bela had a mobility scooter done up to look like
A traditional ojibwe canoe.
As far as I know, I think traditional ojibwe canoe
Is made out of birch bark,
And hers was made out of ikea boxes, but still.
[laughing]
Might not be seaworthy, but definitely worth seeing.
[laughing]
And then they have a ballgame.
I didn't know much about it, and I found myself
Playing catch up with marsha shilling.
[cheering & applauding]
On first nations day, we always celebrate.
It's kind of like a competitive game
Between the community.
Competitive, not competitive.
You know, they're razzing each other.
You can hear them, right? But they're all having fun.
We're still big on community and
Bringing everybody together.
See, it's guys and gals and people of all ages.
Well, I actually made a couple of plays in the field.
I got to bat.
♪
Here we go, play ball!
♪
-[cheering] -run!
Out!
[cheering & laughing]
I didn't make it past first base,
But that's par for the course.
[laughing]
[applauding]
Good game, good game.
Good game, guys. Good game.
♪
Forced from the land in the cold water drama,
The chippewa made purchase in the township of rama.
Farming rocky ground is grueling, let's face it.
As bleak as things seemed, though,
You made a bid for the casino.
The consensus is you absolutely aced it.
[laughing]
Visual art and fishing is represented in this nation.
The fish are more difficult to see.
You milk the ones you catch for future generations.
You don't put that milk in your tea.
[laughing]
I'll try saying mino-bimaadiziwin.
When catching dreams, may you catch lots of them.
The chippewas of rama are here to stay...
For despite being moved around,
You've grown roots in rocky ground.
Nothing sweeter than home...
And rama is sweet home plate.
Thanks for coming out, everybody.
You've been great!
-[cheering & applauding] -thank you so much.
We'll see you again, rama.
It was awesome.
Really nice to see everybody out here
Having a good time and laughing.
♪
He did a good job.
You could tell that he was like
Really invested in looking.
But when we did point out a big pike in the distance,
He was like, "I don't see it."
[laughing]
And because I like to give back to the community,
I'm gonna- there's my tip, there's my tip for you.
Tip for the dealer! Thank you very much.
♪
You guys go on. I'm, I'm...
I'm just gonna... 5 more minutes.
♪
Yeah, just go, go, go, go.